Letters To The Editor

'Wars' on Social Problems Ignore Cause and Effect

To the Editor:

Bravo to Timothy Shriver and Roger Weissberg for exposing the
futility of designing special programs for every adolescent symptom
("No New Wars!," Commentary, May 15, 1996). By waging separate wars on
drug abuse, teen pregnancy, AIDS, suicide, and dropouts, policymakers
fragment efforts and create even more problems.

Several thinking errors allow this fragmentation. One is called
reification. Anything that can be named becomes a "thing," and planners
think they must make a program for that thing. Reification in language
leads to separate images that seem to require separate solutions. Thus,
thinkers fail to see that delinquencies, dropping out, violence, and
other problems can all be perceived as different manifestations of a
pervasive system.

A second error is a misunderstanding of the concepts of cause and
effect. Ordinary mechanistic thinking ascribes destructive behaviors to
external causes which act upon children--"a complex web of familial,
economic, and cultural circumstances." Presumably, students must be
helped to adapt and cope with these modern stresses. Thinking of causes
as forces acting upon people prevents policymakers from seeing
destructive behavior as an inevitable function of what goes on in
society.

Constant adversarial relationships characterize the internal and
external systems of society and schools. Adults consider children as
subjects to be helped, molded, guided, directed, required, mandated,
motivated, expected, handled, punished, rewarded, and so forth. This
adult-child reciprocity leaves children only two choices: to conform or
rebel. That's the system. Of course, forcing children into chronic
competition with each other constitutesthe essence of the adversarial
system, with inevitable destructive manifestations.

A third error of thinking is that education is something to be
delivered, in other words, that prevention and solution of problems
depend upon the offering of better educational programs.

Mr. Shriver and Mr. Weissberg recommend more holistic programs
addressing cognitive, affective, attitudinal, and perceptual skills.
Yes, of course, these would be better. But education needs to be
thought of as experiences lived, not as goods received. Children need
to be thought of not as objects or even as cherished recipients. They
are conscious people with minds of their own. They will live out
conformity or rebellion as long as we adults continue to think and act
mechanistically.

Quality Theater Education Brings Learning to Life

To the Editor:

Your photo essay on the school musical production distressed me
("Center Stage: A High School Enacts That Annual Rite of Spring, the
Musical," April 24, 1996). Because yours is the key publication read by
education policymakers nationwide, I was embarrassed by the limited
scope of the article. You should present a more balanced examination of
theater-arts education.

It is not that I disagree that school productions stimulate
higher-level thinking and cooperative learning. As a theater-arts
educator and a passionate advocate of arts education, I know the
benefits of education in the arts. I also know the benefits to a whole
school when all students participate in such education. Research
continues to bolster my beliefs.

My concern is more that I have read no other articles about
theater-arts education in Education Week. And since this one had
such a prominent placement in the issue, I would, if I were an
education policymaker, infer that theater-arts education is
specifically about performance by a few gifted and talented students,
while everyone else watches.

Performance is a small, albeit important, part of the story of
theater education. National standards for what all students should know
and be able to do in theater, dance, music, and visual art have been
published. State and local standards extend the national initiative.
These standards show that there is much more to education in theater
than "putting on the school play." Skills in creativity, cooperation,
research, history, and integration of learning are most of the
story.

Arts education unlocks the rest of the curriculum. Quality theater
education, firmly rooted in content standards, brings learning to life.
By exploring information through dramatic means, students learn with
understanding.

When prestigious publications like yours report only the
stereotypical, education leaders obtain incomplete information. Let's
hope that the same is not happening in other content areas, such as
math, science, or language arts.

Michael Pearl
President
Alliance for Colorado Theatre
Aurora, Colo.

Michigan Tenure Law: Reformed, Streamlined

To the Editor:

I wanted to alert you to errors of fact and misconceptions contained
in your recent article on teacher tenure ("Critics Target Teacher
Tenure, But Most Blows Miss the Mark, April 17, 1996).

The statement that "[t]alk of tenure change also has fizzled in
states such as Michigan" is incorrect. In 1993, the Michigan
legislature passed, and the governor signed, sweeping reforms of
Michigan's teacher-tenure law significantly streamlining the process as
well as implementing other improvements. The reforms include extending
the initial probationary period from two to four years, limiting recall
rights to a period of three years after the date of layoff, and
allowing school districts to suspend pay for up to three days in a
school year without invoking the hearing requirements of the tenure
act.

In addition, the hearing procedure was significantly streamlined,
replacing the hearing before the local board of education and possible
subsequent hearing before the state tenure commission with a single
hearing before an administrative-law judge. The hearing must be
completed and the final decision rendered within strict time lines to
ensure a speedy resolution of tenure claims. Appeal of the
administrative decision to the courts has also been simplified. An
appeal goes directly to the court of appeals, whereas it used to go
first to the trial court and then a further appeal could be made to the
court of appeals. These reforms have significantly reduced the time and
expense of a tenure proceeding.

The reforms also implemented, for the first time in Michigan,
evaluation requirements both for probationary teachers as well as for
tenured teachers. Probationary teachers must be observed and evaluated
every year, while tenured teachers must be observed and evaluated every
three years. The new law provides for an individualized development
plan developed by appropriate administrative personnel in consultation
with the individual teacher for all probationary teachers and for
tenured teachers receiving an unsatisfactory evaluation.

Another error contained in the article concerns an allusion to a
report by the ABC television program "20/20" on teacher tenure. In that
report, a cursory reference was made to a Michigan case which, at the
very least, took the case out of context. "20/20" reported that in
Michigan a board of education was unable to dismiss a teacher who
threatened a 3rd-grade student with a knife. Your article compounds the
error by incorrectly stating that the teacher "threatened children with
knives." Only one threat, one child, and one small pocketknife were
involved.

In addition to the factual discrepancies, my main concern with the
"20/20" reference to the Michigan case, and to your repetition of it,
is the total lack of consideration of the circumstances involved. In
that case, the teacher was attempting to deal with an unruly 3rd-grade
student who was sticking out his tongue at the teacher. The teacher
took out his pocketknife, opened the small blade, and told the student
that if he stuck out his tongue again, the teacher would cut it out.
The evidence at the tenure-commission hearing indicated that the
teacher was not serious and that he was attempting to deal with the
student in what he mistakenly believed to be a humorous manner.

The evidence also showed that the student did not take the threat
seriously. In fact, the student approached the teacher shortly after
the incident and smiled and laughed, and later stuck out his tongue
again at the teacher. The administration also did not take the threat
seriously at the time of its occurrence; the principal's report of the
incident indicated that the teacher's intent "seemed harmless." In
fact, there was not an immediate suspension or even a thorough
investigation at the time it occurred.

Nevertheless, the tenure commission condemned the teacher's behavior
as totally inappropriate under any circumstances. In a 30-page opinion,
the commission carefully weighed all of the factors in this case,
including the teacher's 22-1 / 2 years of service with the school
district, that he had been judged "very effective" in all categories of
instruction and classroom management, and that he had no prior
disciplinary record involving physical force or misconduct with
students. In light of the circumstances of the case and the teacher's
long record of service marred by this one serious error of judgment,
the commission determined that discharge was not appropriate and
instead imposed a penalty of a two-year suspension without pay. (The
actual suspension period without pay was from Dec. 10, 1993, until Jan.
22, 1996). The reporting on this case, both by "20/20" and in your
article, failed to point out that the teacher, in fact, received a
serious penalty, or to consider the circumstances of the case.

The notion that it is impossible to fire a tenured teacher is not
true in Michigan. The Michigan tenure statute permits a district to
terminate a teacher for "reasonable and just cause" and provides a
due-process procedure. It should be noted that the vast majority of
cases in Michigan involving charges filed against teachers for
incompetence and unprofessional conduct result in discharge or
demotion.

Noting a 'Pedantic' Strain In Standards Criticism

To the Editor:

As a high school English teacher for nearly a quarter of a century,
and as a "product of the 'drill and kill' school of literacy training,"
I was somewhat surprised to discover that J. Martin Rochester, in his
diatribe against the new national English standards, violated several
of the grammar rules he apparently holds so dear ("The Decline of
Literacy," Commentary, May 15, 1996). I noted a split infinitive ("able
to deftly touch"), a random shift in person ("It is true that students
must learn ... before you search the Internet for information..."), and
a missing helping verb ("you better have").

Despite Mr. Rochester's conviction that K-12 education has abandoned
the battle for literacy, my seniors do, in fact, know and use the
conventions of grammar and English usage, and would recognize the above
samples as errors. They also know that sentences are clearer, crisper,
and more effective when they start with strong subjects and active
verbs rather than indefinite pronouns and being verbs. "It is strange
that in a document dedicated to articulating standards, there is not a
single reference to 'rigor.' There has been a general movement away
from any emphasis on clear, coherent expository writing ..." might be
rewritten by my students more clearly and coherently to read,
"Strangely, a document dedicated to articulating standards omits any
reference to 'rigor.'"

As for Mr. Rochester's attack on inventive spelling, whole language,
and peer editing, clearly he lacks knowledge of or experience with any
of the three.

The new English standards may have their flaws, but so does a
pedantic insistence on clinging to 25-year-old instructional methods.
The world is changing, and teachers at all levels must be responsive to
those changes if our students are to meet the demands of the
future.

Religious Parents Want Saints and Good Citizens

To the Editor:

In "Virtue Should Be Seen, Not Just Heard" (Commentary, May 29,
1996), Amitai Etzioni claims that "[t]he religious right is lacking a
broad-based and inclusive strategy for turning public schools into
citadels of character education." As with many generalizations about
the religious right, this assertion fails to make some important
distinctions. In truth, many groups lumped into the religious-right
camp strongly support the vision of character education that Mr.
Etzioni describes.

The one area where they want to question Mr. Etzioni and others like
him, however, is over the goals and cognitive foundations of character
education. In other words, they believe that most forms of character
education aim too low. Many Christian parents long for their children
not only to acquire the virtues necessary to be good citizens, but also
to be captured by a moral vision that motivates them to even greater
ethical heights. They pray for saints and not merely good citizens.

Furthermore, as George H. Gallup Jr. and Timothy Jones show in their
book The Saints Among Us, religious beliefs and values have a
great deal to do with whether a person is merely a good citizen or a
saint. In other words, saints are concerned with what Mr. Etzioni terms
"what one prays to or hails to." Certainly, the U.S. Supreme Court has
ruled that public schools should not tell children what to pray or hail
to, but that does not mean the public schools or authors like Mr.
Etzioni should ridicule parents for believing that religious
convictions greatly influence their children's moral behavior.

Critic Provides Refreshing, 'Intellectual' Look at Education

To the Editor:

After reading Richard Paul's Commentary titled "The Practical
Impractical" (May 29, 1996), I couldn't help but miss all the wonderful
words and phrases such as "performance standards," "empowerment,"
"portfolio assessment," and other contemporary pedagogical "buzzwords."
In spite of missing them, I thought, how refreshingly appropriate to
hear the word "intellectual" associated with education!

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